Undefined
by 01cheers
Summary: Michael ponders her relationship with Ash Tyler… whoever he is. Which leads to a missing scene in the finale.
1. Duplicity

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This first part is pretty much a character study in fic form; as for the concluding bit aka chapter 3, I have a general notion, based on the preview, of what the writers have in store for Tyler in the season finale (and keep my fingers crossed that he at least lives through the end of it without succumbing to the infamous _redemption = death_ trope), and have drafted it accordingly, with a couple of face-to-face moments between Tyler and Michael; but will wait to see how exactly it plays out before finishing and posting it, so as not to be too wide of the mark as far as the plot points go.

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1\. Duplicity

Usually, waking up was a reprieve. One moment she would be staring, for the hundredth time, at what had become known as the Battle of the Binary Stars, pushing back the sinking knowledge of impending disaster unleashed by her mutinous hand; the next, she would be fighting the searing pain in her throat as she yelled to Saru over the comm, begging him yet again to grant her the delay needed to bring her Captain's body onboard… and then she would find herself sitting bolt upright and breathless in her bunk, feeling the sticky cold sweat trickling down her chest, but relieved that the real horror was months ago, and the raw anguish was, by now, easier to keep at bay when she was awake.

On the couple of occasions when it happened as she shared a bed with Ash, he would pull her to him and cradle her against that broad chest, muscular arms surprisingly gentle as he ran caressing fingers up and down her forearms and shoulders, soothing her back to sanity. He did not ask; after the first, tentative "bad dream?" and her heavy "yeah", it seemed like he understood enough not to press her. If anything, she thought, his own nightmares ought to be a thousand times worse; yet he appeared to be a remarkably sound sleeper, at least around her.

Little did she know… little did either of them know.

When she dreams now, waking up is the nightmarish part.

They are together in his quarters, lights set to minimum intensity bathing them in a dim golden glow, their bodies intertwined, and as she basks in the warmth, the exquisite sensation of his soft skin, the joy and tenderness shining in his magnificent eyes, the glorious, still-fresh but already-familiar pleasure of intimacy, for the first time in ages she feels at peace with herself and the universe; she feels at home. She feels safe.

And then, with her next breath, she is chillingly aware of being awake and alone in a narrow bunk, Tilly's soft snoring across the cabin being her only hope of keeping calm, to little avail… because she remembers.

It feels like she just fell a hundred feet and landed on solid concrete.

It would only take a few dozen steps to reach him; the perverse attendant privilege of his strange new status on board was Saru letting him keep his private cabin without so much as programming a security lock override.

But as far as she is concerned, he might as well be back in the Mirror Universe.

xxx

Her unassailable Vulcan logic tells her there is no reason she should be the one to feel so tormented, and offers her two clear-cut, equally straightforward courses of action. Either accept that Ash Tyler is who he says he is, who he now appears to be by all accounts – broken and guilty but ultimately human and deserving of forgiveness – and do her best to put the recent hellish events behind them and help him back to his feet; or stand by her decision to cut him loose, leaving him to work through his momentous wrongdoings and redeem himself by his own devices, and keep her mind off him until – unless – he irrefutably proves his humanity and they both are ready to face each other without reservation.

Equally straightforward, and equally excruciating nonetheless.

Ultimately, the second option is the better one to follow; the lesser evil, at any rate.

She may have spent a lifetime denying herself the right to feel but is too self-aware to deny that for an instant, seeing him crushed by guilt and loneliness and longing, she felt the urge to just hold him and help him be whole again… until he made the tiniest move toward her, and the memory of cold fury, ignited in those same eyes as his hands tightened on her throat, hit her, so vivid and immediate that she flinched and had to make an effort to stand her ground. Her own longing for him is far from extinguished, but if she were to give in to it, she would be constantly reliving that agonising memory and fighting her reflexes, and the continued distrust would poison and subvert any attempts to salvage the affection that may still exist between them. It would become the proverbial death of a thousand cuts, ending in an ugly, tormented shambles that would leave them both weakened and wounded. Better to have delivered a single clean cut now, to spare them both from protracting the pain… and maybe leave a sliver of a chance of an understanding, if not a reconciliation, in the future.

She knows it is better this way; she hopes he can understand it too; but she is damned if it makes things any easier.

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	2. Duality

2\. Duality

Most of the time, she wishes she were lightyears away from him across the universe. Most of the time, except for those heartbreaking awakenings from her new special brand of nightmare. _Out of sight, out of mind_ would surely be a better way to keep him from inhabiting her dreams, especially compared to seeing him regularly in the mess hall and occasionally passing him in the gangways. He does not seek her company and says nothing beyond the briefest of greetings, and only when it is unavoidable, the rest of the time keeping his acknowledgement to a perfunctory nod. But too many times already, when they are in the same space and she happens to glance around – unintentionally, she assures herself – she notices his eyes tracking her closely enough to know that he is not having it any easier than she; and yet she is glad to see him purposely and visibly following her final bidding at their last encounter. _Most of the time_. At least he is trying with the _out of sight_ part.

Not that it is helping much where the _out of mind_ is concerned.

She does her best to keep busy, but whenever she is on her own, all too often her thoughts drift back to their last conversation, replaying it on a loop, her mind engaging in the seemingly futile task of suggesting better arguments to counter his assertions, which in all honesty, at times bordered on the selfish complaints thrown around by a petulant child… not that it makes them any easier to dismiss, not when she has seen the anguish behind the words, more powerful than whatever he was saying.

One thing rankles in particular, unexpectedly so: the idea that her decision to break up with him was the result of her discovery of his Klingon persona. Could it be that simple; could it be her continued resentment of the Klingon in him that made her push him away? It is an answer that readily leaps to the surface, but one that, strangely, smacks too much of a convenient pretext. After all, when she confronted Voq in the Mirror Universe with her reckless offer of help, she felt neither hatred nor revulsion; rather, something akin to grudging respect bordering on sympathy for his devotion to a noble cause.

It is, of course, an open question as to who the man she has known as Tyler has now become.

Human or Klingon… if Saru is to be believed, in his final delirious agony, before L'Rell apparently delivered her _coup de grace_ to her onetime lover, he was both – and neither; but even if it is true that Ash Tyler's mind is the only one left to inhabit the body that was once Voq's, he _still is_ both, and neither. She shudders at the immensity of unnecessary torture he has gone through in order to become what he is – who he is now; the knowledge that Voq deliberately chose this path would be enough to make him a monster in Ash Tyler's eyes, probably enough for the mere suspicion of it to drive him to the brink of insanity, to say nothing of the blood-soaked memories of his body's original host still haunting his mind… and yet as Tyler, he can hardly be blamed for that choice. And she, with her human nature and part-Vulcan nurture, should probably be less hasty in delivering judgement of a fellow hybrid being, no matter how twisted the circumstances that led to his creation.

No; it's not that, not really.

The most damaging, the most destructive part of what he did to her, the tipping point that, if only for the briefest of instants, made her eager to damage _him_ , was the betrayal of trust. She can almost contemplate the possibility, no matter how remote, of him being a Klingon underneath the human exterior, and still not walking away from him, had he come clean to her about it. What she cannot get past is the realization that, aware that his mind and body harboured a being infected with murderous intent, he concealed the knowledge from her, breaking his own solemn promise and abusing her trust to endanger not only her life, but those of the entire crew. The knowledge that, by the time Hugh Culber's body was lying cold in the Discovery med bay, he was on the Mirror Shenzhou with her, sharing her full confidence, not to mention her bed. Even when Hugh's murder was Voq's doing, Ash Tyler's duty to her as his friend and lover was to confess it to her.

Then again… talking of trust, her record, while nowhere near as terrible as his, is not exactly spotless; the disastrous consequences of her betrayal of Captain Georgiou, no matter how soundly justified by the greater good in her mind back then, are a daily reminder of that. And talking of trust, mere days ago, when she gave herself a second chance of sorts with Emperor Georgiou for reasons that were ultimately emotional, she knowingly endangered the crew's lives when they had little choice in the matter.

The truth is, they are both damaged beings. Sure enough, she is further along the road to recovery, but that same head start gives her the ability to admit that she is still a long way from being whole. Had she been free from her own demons, she might have had the resolve to stay by Tyler's side to see him through the worst of it… maybe. As it is, both of them are still too messed up to be much good at helping others. By staying together they would end up lashing out at each other and dragging each other down, like two people drowning.

All she can do is keep forging her own path, and see if she and Tyler ever reach the point where she finds herself able to trust him again. Maybe they have too much in common for things to just end here. Maybe their paths were meant to cross, to ultimately lead to something greater than their imperfect selves… Damn Lorca and his talk of destiny; the man practically engineered the course of events aboard the Discovery for the past few months, and still his philosophical pitch seems to have rubbed off on her.

 _._

 _to be concluded_

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This is too long a footnote for (half of) a really short fic, but here goes a bit of peripheral blabbering.

I never watched Star Trek until Discovery, having been a Star Wars fangirl as an adolescent and a Battlestar Galactica fan later on, among others. Trek seemed too upbeat and almost sedate, but Discovery looks to have changed that. I got into it courtesy of Jason Isaacs' Lorca, but the Burnham/Tyler romance is so inherently angsty and exquisitely fucked-up that I took the bait, and plan on sticking around for season 2. Besides, as people speculate, Jason Isaacs doth protest _kinda_ too much re: being dead, so here's hoping for Prime!Lorca showing up eventually ;) I also do hope the show writers keep Tyler alive into the next season; IMO he is at too interesting a juncture to get promptly killed off without exploring the ramifications of his dual identity.

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	3. Singularity

After reading the spoilers last night I expected to hate the way the finale dealt with Ash/Voq's storyline. I mean, I *am* very happy he survived, and I had thought it most likely he would end up staying with the Klingons one way or another, but seriously, voluntarily going with L'Rell? No, really, _L'Rell_? Who, from his Tyler-persona PoV, cut him into ribbons and abused him? That is just too messed up Stockholm syndrome-style, and IMO not that plausible, to put it mildly... but that's just the frustrated Burnham/Tyler fangirl talking.

Then I watched it today and liked it a lot better than I had expected. Apart from that weird _going with L'Rell_ business ;)

The problem is, not only did the now-canon Burnham/Tyler finale storyline go, _like_ , 90% the way I had expected it to, but they actually _said_ most of what I had imagined them saying in this missing scene; and said it a lot better than I did for them. So the final chapter I had written a few days earlier ended up being both redundant and not that accurate vis-à-vis canon events.

For a few minutes I thought of rewriting it from scratch… and then made a handful of minor tweaks and figured I'd post it as is. Judge it for what it is, a well-intentioned guess that has been outdone by canon.

For anyone wondering, this takes place 13 minutes into the episode, after we see Mirror Georgiou reminisce about _Gabriel_ and before we see the four of them walking to the transporter.

The unexpected collateral effect is that I had also typed up a one-shot pure wish fulfilment sequel to this one set one year into the future, transparently titled _Reconciliation_ , and that one, incredibly, still stands on its own merits with only the tiniest of tweaks. I will post it in a bit, and let you decide how plausible it is ;)

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 _Singularity (disambiguation)_

 _Mathematical singularity, a point at which a given mathematical object is not defined or not "well-behaved" […]_

 _Singularity (system theory), when a small change can cause a large effect_

 _[…]_

 _Gravitational singularity, a region in spacetime in which tidal gravitational forces become infinite_

(definitions courtesy of Wikipedia)

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"Sorry for disturbing you."

If she is surprised at seeing Tyler in the hatchway of the empty mess hall at this hour, he is even more so. His eyes light up when he sees her; but that initial reaction almost instantly gives way to a neutral look that is too studied to be entirely plausible. For a few seconds, he just stands there in the hatchway like a framed frozen hologram.

She was not planning on being one-on-one with him so soon, but with both of them less than two hours away from leaving for Qo'nos, it just so happened that both of them were finished with mission prep, and could not think of a better place to go.

Or just _had to_ happen, if Lorca's destiny stuff were to be believed, she thinks wryly.

A few days ago, she would have just let him make his way back out, with perhaps a word of gratitude for understanding. But today is different.

"You aren't disturbing."

If her words are not the clearest invitation for him to stay, her expression likely is; and she is both oddly relieved when he takes the cue and belatedly struck by the double entendre. She may not be ready to relent on the prospect of getting back together, but no longer feels uneasy in his presence or compelled to avoid him, and cannot help wondering what is going through his mind, at least on this occasion. The motive she states to herself is to check that he is neither acutely distressed nor harbouring plans of sabotage, both of which would be equally disastrous on their trip.

If there is anything else to it, well, she puts it down to the typical human attitude at a juncture immediately preceding a time of certain danger.

The peculiar behaviour of some beings, and notably of humans, before potentially fatal engagements, with the way they tend to open up to each other, is a well-known anthropological fact. Where Vulcans normally focus their thoughts on the details of the mission ahead, Klingons usually whip themselves into a rampaging fury with verbal and visual displays of aggression, and Kelpiens, more often than not, try to shore up their resistance to the fear-induced mental paralysis to find a way of minimizing the risk, people seek to get in touch with their loved ones, have heart-to-heart chats with comrades, and generally tend to make the most of the remaining time to assert their humanity, knowing that they may not have another chance. Often with people committed or attracted to each other it involves last-chance sex; not an option here, and attraction or lack thereof has nothing to do with it, but she understands by now how the heightened risk and urgency bring people closer. Before she met him, she used to retreat into herself and mentally regroup, Vulcan-style.

He requested a cup of tea from the synthesizer, but now that he got it, he just sits two tables away from her, his profile sharp against the lighting on the back wall, the mug all but forgotten in his hand.

And the way she sees it, now is her chance. She may never get another.

"Mind if I ask you something?"

She is momentarily taken aback by the flicker of alarm in his face at her question. It looks like, even though she invited him to stay, he did not expect her to want to talk. She is not enough of a Vulcan to be able to read his mind, not to mention that trying to do so without his consent would do nothing to improve her score on the issue of trust… but for what it's worth, it seems decidedly more like a Kelpien threat-ganglia kind of alarm than a tense-predator kind of alarm, afraid of being hurt rather than frustrated at being questioned while contemplating malice.

"Sure." He has switched back to his present default appearance of guarded composure; the overt anguish he practically radiated a few days ago is gone now, she notes. She'd like to read it as a good sign, but wishes she could be certain that it was more than skin deep.

She gets up and walks over to him, sitting down at the table across from him. Unlike his seeming apprehension moments ago at hearing her question, this gesture of hers makes his features relax.

"Why did you choose to come along?"

He hesitates; sure, in his position, explaining why he is here preparing to sabotage the planet his physical body considered a spiritual homeworld is not that simple; but when he speaks up, his own question briefly throws her off balance.

"Now, or then?" _Then_ meaning, unmistakably, the time he went with her to the Mirror _Shenzhou_.

"Both," she says reflexively.

She did not mean to ask, but is too keen to know.

And the question he starts answering is the one she had been unable bring herself to utter.

"I wasn't… didn't… intend to jeopardise the plan," he begins, still too defensive for her liking, and trails off almost at once. Whether seeing her reaction, no matter how well contained, or having thought better of it on his own account, he goes on, the carefully composed expression slipping as he speaks. "All I wanted was to protect you. Whatever it took. With my life, if need be. I knew that if anyone found out how… mentally unbalanced I was, they'd never let me go on the _Shenzhou_ , _you_ 'd never let me come along, and I couldn't take it, couldn't bear to see you going off into danger like that. I thought I could handle it. What I _couldn't_ handle was if… anything happened to you, it would kill me. I guess I really went the wrong way about keeping you safe," he finishes with just a hint of his familiar sardonic smirk.

 _Took the words out of my mouth_ , she thinks sourly.

"You do realise it was completely illogical," she says instead, hoping that it comes across less harsh.

"Not everyone has the benefit of a Vulcan upbringing," he counters, and adds quickly if rather self-consciously, "I meant it as a joke." To be fair, he did try to smile. "Not everyone is as… blinded as I was."

"Well, you did have to deal with two persons inside one mind." She is caught unawares by her own remark; she was not expecting to start defending him _to himself_.

Least of all was she expecting him to look defeated at hearing her words.

"But that's it. I was… When I realised what was happening, when I figured that this… creature… was trying to take over my mind, I was… afraid that if you found out, if you even suspected it, you would feel nothing but hatred for me, you'd be so… repulsed that you'd leave me at once, even if I presented no danger. Prison, I could handle; I _did_ handle." He sounds defiant saying it, though if one were to see things from a different perspective, it was a self-inflicted punishment. "Physical torture, I could manage. But losing you, being rejected by you, was more than I could take. And look where it got me."

What he does not know is that she is less certain now of her inevitable rejection than he is. Be it in the past scenario _or_ in the present one.

"So instead of telling you what was happening to me, I tried to fight it, to keep the… other one… shut off. I thought, I hoped, it would go away. And instead it kept getting worse."

 _You really should've known better_ , she thinks.

"it's not about the Klingon," she says instead. She has spent enough time mulling it over to know it. "It's about trust."

"Yeah." He seems utterly crushed, but on the plus side, if he is not arguing, he must have figured it out, too. He just looks down, and she unexpectedly misses the eye contact, before he glances back at her again. "I know. And in the end, I became the greatest danger to you, and to the mission and to our crewmates… but when that… monster… attacked you, it wasn't me. I know it was this body, but it wasn't _me_. And killing Culber was… _his_ doing. _His_ mind, not mine. I'd have – found a way of getting past Hugh but I'd never have–"

"I know," she echoes. She may still have a tough time writing off the memory of him choking her as another man's doing, but even in her own mind, his guilty part in Culber's murder was one of concealment, not execution. "But you were wrong when you said, when you thought, that I'd hate you because of a Klingon connection," she repeats. "I had… every reason to hate the Klingons when I was a child." For an instant she wonders if she should just tell him why, before resolve fails her. Twenty years on, the horror is still too raw. "But then I spent my time growing up among the Vulcans. I've been around them for so long as to become part Vulcan myself, so you won't scare me off with having a conflicted mind. I do… resent… the Klingons' wanton violence, and lust for war, and disregard for life, but I don't hate the Klingons themselves. Some of them, maybe…" Her parents' murderers, without a doubt. T'Kuvma, maybe, for killing her captain, but he is dead anyway. "But not all of them, not by any means." Her meeting with Mirror Voq comes to mind again; she has seen her share of humans less honourable, and more bloodthirsty, than him. "You are who you are, and it probably wouldn't stop me from…" _loving you still_ , she almost says, but checks herself in time before she steps into an emotional minefield. "You should have trusted me. I wouldn't have thought less of you for that. Quite the contrary. And we could have tried to make it work."

"Yeah." Luckily, he does not know enough about what exactly she did at the Binary Stars to call her out on her own tarnished record on the matter of trust. That, and he is still too busy being dejected.

It is becoming dangerous, so much so that she starts fumbling around for a way to steer the conversation onto a less risky subject when it occurs to her that he still has not answered her original question. Not much safer, perhaps, but a diversion of sorts, anyway.

"What about now? Why did you agree to come along now?" With the way Emperor Georgiou spoke of him in his presence, Michael herself had been tempted to punch her lights out. And yet he agreed. _For Starfleet_ , he said; but the way he had looked at her an instant earlier had told her a different story.

A story she should not be so achingly desperate to hear him tell her now.

"You'll think I'm talking in corny clichés," he starts tentatively, "even worse, you might think I'm lying to you… but aside from the fact that I speak Klingon and have access to... Voq's memory, I want to… I want a chance to make things right." Damn right it is corny, but she is pretty sure he is not lying. "I can't undo what I did to you or bring Doctor Culber back, but I want to do what I can to help the crew, and the Federation." He pauses, and then rushes ahead, with the blank, wide-eyed expression of someone jumping off a cliff. "And I want to think, to hope, that it would make you think better of me. Even if I know… I don't expect you to… I'm not trying…" What he decidedly lacks in eloquence, he makes up for with those imploring eyes, and this time she is relieved when he gives up and shakes his head, breaking the eye contact. "I just thought it would be a chance to prove to you that there really was a part of me worth caring for, even if... That way, if I can help put an end to this war, I could die a happy man." The sardonic smirk is back at the _man_ part, but she does not find it remotely amusing.

Worse perhaps, she does not even think it corny.

But she cannot let him get carried away by this line of reasoning.

Not if she wants him to have a chance of making it back in one piece.

"Now you're being melodramatic," she says, as calmly as possible. "The last thing I want, the last thing any of us – needs – is for you to seek out ways of getting yourself killed." He abruptly looks up, and she suddenly forgets what else she was planning on saying. "That would be just… stupid," she finishes bluntly, hoping to embarrass him into wanting to survive when she cannot readily offer a different kind of enticement. Objectively speaking, apart from the obvious human concern for a fellow crewman's life, now that he looks to have started facing the hard truths on his own, she is hopeful that he is on the right track, and wants him to keep getting better, for his own sake if nothing else.

And to be honest, she is not that certain, not at all, that she wants him out of her life for good.

"Do what needs to be done, but make sure you come back, OK?"

He stares down and says nothing; and thinking – well, _feeling_ that she needs to reinforce her point, she takes hold of his hand, her fingers brushing and briefly tightening against his skin. He reflexively responds, his own fingers wrapping around hers before his hand goes limp, Tyler making an effort not to spook her or make her think he is making a pass at her; which, right now, should technically amount to the same thing. He may be respecting the boundaries she set, but she is in danger of overstepping them as she sits there, her hand resting on top of his, reluctant to relinquish the touch.

"Ah, there you are…" Tilly pokes her head into the mess hall, then apparently checks herself seeing them, then walks in regardless. "Em… well, _Captain_ Georgiou wants us on the bridge for a final briefing."

All things considered, it is good timing in terms of helping her stick to her resolution, yet it does not save her from momentary regret when she pulls away.

xxx

She could not have possibly imagined, two weeks ago, that she would be hugging him again.

She could not have imagined that her heart would be screaming in protest at the thought that this, likely as not, is their final goodbye.

"Forgive me," he breathes against her cheek. She can barely hear him, but the effect of his words on her is not unlike a tidal wave of affection and gratitude.

She did not even realise how much she needed, wanted, how much she _hoped_ he would say this to her.

"I do," she breathes back, before she has even had time to process it. Her answer, it turns out, was in her mind all along.

And then they are kissing, their lips barely touching but the agonising, desperate tenderness threatening to crush her, and she can no longer deny _how much_ she wants to see him again, and knows that at this juncture, she _must_ say something to him that will convey that – and is momentarily at a loss for her choice of farewell blessing.

No, she is no good at saying goodbyes, either.

She could, of course, say something safe and non-committal along the lines of _live long and prosper_ ; but at this moment, it would be meaningless and perversely hurtful.

On the other end of the range, _I love you_ would be ultimately true, but out of place, and out of time. _If you love someone, set them free_ , she remembers the centuries-old saying. Right now, by saying it out loud she would be keeping him shackled, not tethered.

"I will wait for you."

To come back, to defeat his demons, to be ready to face the future with her once again. All of it.

"Thank you." His eyes as he looks at her speak worlds more.

And as she watches him walk away, and sees him turn to look at her one last time, she hopes against all odds that there really is some truth to Lorca's lofty talk about destiny.


End file.
